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At what age does a flirty, fun woman become invisible?

At age 50, I became invisible. The epiphany occurred at a party, where I was suddenly not the fun girl but the dotty auntie figure we humour for a moment before moving on.

Tracy Nesdoly has discovered that as women age they are no longer seen as desirable. (Keith Beaty / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

By Tracy NesdolySpecial to the Star

Wed., Jan. 4, 2012

It happened quite by chance, this new realization.

I had become invisible. Or, if visible, not as welcome a sight as I once was.

The epiphany occurred at one of those after-work events where people are commemorated for good works and waiters don’t come around nearly often enough with small bites of what will turn out to be my dinner.

Standing alone on the sidelines (I was the designated attendee from the office) and growing bored, I did what I always do and inserted myself between two chatting people, who happened to be men, and proceeded to flirt by default. Or it used to be considered flirting. Alas, my clever banter descended into one-sided grilling (me asking questions and they providing answers) until one gentleman said to the other, “So, are we heading to that other party now or what?” As in, get me out of here.

There it was.

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Whoosh, like Alice plunging down the rabbit hole, I was suddenly not the fun girl at the party but the dotty auntie figure we humour for a moment before moving on. And at the same time, miraculously, I had become her chronological opposite, transported back in time to my nerdiest moment of high school, horrified that I’d made a fool of myself.

And, really, teen age (with its pimples and greasy skin) and middle age (with its sags and wrinkles) are both marked by waves of hormones, mood swings and hyper-awareness of appearance, the bookends around that all-too-brief respite called adulthood.

I recalled a conversation I’d had a year earlier with a good friend who was lamenting that at “our age” (let’s euphemistically call it middle age, suggesting we will live to 100) we are invisible. As older women we are no longer desirable, no longer perceived as anything but taking up space a younger person could put to better use in the job, in the relationship, in life.

I thought she needed to up her meds. Certainly, she should speak for herself: I for one was not invisible.

Until suddenly I was. And this was the dreaded day. Age, I now realize, doesn’t creep up, it fells you with changes you didn’t see coming. And it happens at 50.

You vanish, replaced by an old and forgettable woman.

If there is any good news for those of us embarking on the middle years now it is that the boomers have prepared the itinerary, as they always have.

Magazines like Zoomer and More have softened the blow by reporting on sex, relationships and health, with pictures of non-nubiles to match — though More does insist on mentioning age an awful lot – “Updo’s That Won’t Age You!” And of course features on fashion “fit for a grownup” have the effect of never letting you forget you are aging.

And of course older women are now talking frankly about how it feels. Norah Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck and, more recently, I Remember Nothing, are honest and funny accounts of what’s gained and lost as we grow older.

Because boomers have done nothing if not dictate shifts in the Zeitgeist, popular culture has become kinder than they used to to older women, who appear as strong, elegant and often wonderfully dressed characters on television and in the movies.

Think Christine Baranski, 59, portraying law partner Diane Lockhart on The Good Wife (and the star, Juliana Margulies, is herself 44); Glenn Close, 64, as the conniving Patti Hewes in Damages; and most of the leads in Desperate Housewives are nearing 50.

It’s all right to be imperfect, too — as proved with the emergence of such shows as Harry’s Law (Kathy Bates is not only an older woman but a larger one). In Prime Suspect, lovely Maria Bello looks as natural as Helen Mirren did in the UK version, where a slash of lipstick was as close as she got to dressing up. Bello’s character doesn’t bow even to that.

That’s all to the good, but it doesn’t change how it feels to see blankness staring back at you where something like admiration was once evident.

Getting older signals the loss of a certain kind of power. Luckily for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The wolf whistles may have stopped but, if I am to be honest, I’m grateful for the silence — there was a kind of invisibility associated with that as well.

I didn’t feel especially visible or appreciated for my finer points when I was in my 20s and a man I’d hoped would hire me instead asked me to “go to bed” with him. Silly me, thinking the interest was professional. While it might have been easier to chat or be chatted up at a party, the prevailing thought was not “Wow, she’s smart” but rather “Does she or doesn’t she?”

There is also a serenity that’s evident despite the roiling hormones of pre- or full-on menopause.

“In my youth I was ruled by hormones, but in a different way,” says a frequently flushed friend of 57. “I was always madly in love or in heart-wrenching despair at lost love or otherwise lusting after someone. My libido has quieted. My life isn’t so fraught.”

Nonetheless, it seems despite the fact that the boomers are aging in droves, ageism is alive and well in the workplace, at least according to anecdotal reports. And this is true for both sexes — an out of work male creative director in his 50s lamented to me that more doors shut than opened to welcome his vast experience — the thinking being that it takes one to know one and the target demographic for most advertising is a sweet spot of people ages 18 to 35.

And my flushed friend, who is currently looking for a job, doesn’t want potential employers to know how old she is: “I have to leave as many jobs off the resumé as I put on it, just to keep it from looking like I am an old broad.”

When I was revising my own resumé with the help of a professional recruiter, I was advised to leave off some of my early stints for the same reason — I would seem too old.

My early career is marked by memories of being terrified – “fake it till you make it, a sentiment that is thankfully long gone.

Experience feels a lot better than winging it, confidence is better for your system than bravado. Employers may be slow to acknowledge the value of experience until inexperience bites them in their soon-to-be sagging bottoms.

Aging undeniably means the loss of a certain kind of power. But the power conferred by youth is a temporary gift, often unwieldy and misunderstood. Being young and/or attractive is a given, not earned.

No doubt, I was shocked to realize I suddenly didn’t have that power of youth. Not quite sure what would replace it, I panicked. Now I know it has been replaced with a power that is subtler and stronger.

And what peace there is in age.

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